


On the Quad

by Typey



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: AU Week, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-21
Updated: 2015-08-21
Packaged: 2018-04-16 11:02:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4622895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Typey/pseuds/Typey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: “We’re both professors in the same department and it enhances your reputation with the students as a mysterious enigma and my reputation as a stone-cold terror if we pretend to hate each other, plus when we back each other up in departmental meetings everybody’s so surprised they give in right away” AU — obviously Helena is terrifying and Myka is completely bewildering, except, <i>obviously</i>, to each other.</p><p>* upon request by an anonymous reader, I will note that there is one instance of the f-word in dialogue in this fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On the Quad

“God, what do you think it would take to get Professor Bering to be, like, a _real person_ just once? It’s like, like she doesn’t know how to talk about anything other than, like, Shakespeare or whatever. It’s like she has to make an effort to focus on _people_ , you know? Oh my god, imagine having to be her _boyfriend_.”

“Seriously, she’s so...aloof? Though she is smart as fuck, and she obviously knows more about literature than anyone on the planet. Other than _maybe_ Wells.” The 20-year-old from Myka Bering’s “Follies and Fools” class shuddered a little as she spoke the name, and her friend nodded in agreement with both the assessment of each faculty member’s excellence and the reflexive reaction to any mention of the latter.

“Ha, not like you could pay either of them to interact long enough for a competition. Have you _seen_ them passing each other on the Quad?” The ‘I’ve got my eyes on you, asshole’ hand motion was comical. “Though if there’s anyone out there willing to put aside personal feelings for a chance to remind you at all times that she’s smarter than you, it’s Wells.”

“Speak of the devil…” Having heard the students’ conversation as she walked quietly behind them down the otherwise empty hallway, Helena Wells had lowered her normal speaking pitch and volume precisely to elicit the set of strangled gasps that escaped the two English majors. Gasps that were quickly followed by stammered attempts at apologies she acknowledged with only the briefest sideways flick of her eyes as she passed them.

Rather than waiting for the mortified young women to piece together a complete sentence — or to have their wishes fulfilled by getting sucked into a miraculously appearing black hole — Helena headed toward the building’s large oak doors, grinning wickedly and aware that the pair behind her still hadn’t recovered themselves enough to be following. She’d have to pick up her pace slightly if she was to going have enough time to stop by her house before the blasted faculty meeting at six, but she’d wait until she was outside to walk any faster.

Helena hadn’t let them see her amusement after she startled them, and she wouldn’t let them see her hurry. She never let anyone see anything she didn’t want them to — though Helena had long ago come around on letting herself enjoy that another person (One other person. Ever.) had casually ignored her finely layered facades. 

A wave of memories of having been continually exasperated at the sheer impertinence of someone refusing to care that Helena G. Wells was mercurial and complicated and, well, difficult turned the wicked grin into a soft smile by the time Helena reached her front walk. Climbing the porch steps and slinging her bag off her shoulder, the soft smile turned into total relaxation; she had just enough time to make a cup of tea before she needed to head back to campus, and Helena was going to spend it thinking about how that exasperation had gradually become delight (in the challenge and then in the company) and eventually contentment.

Even if she hadn’t already been happily occupied by recalling the path she traveled to end up with — and perhaps even deserve — a partner who loved and understood her, it would have been impossible for Helena to think of anything else once she opened the door and saw the post-it stuck to the top piece of mail piled neatly on the front table. It was more than the fact that the mail wasn’t spread underneath the slot; it was more than the fact that it had been sorted by size and centered on the cherry-stained console; it was even more than the “tidied up, you can owe me” scrawled across the note — it was more than the sum of all these and every other thing. It was that she walked in to her house and was home, because this place was where she opened up her life, her heart, to someone else.

Leaning against the kitchen counter, Helena waited for her tea and savored the knowledge that she had this thing, this connection, that was just theirs. That no one else needed to understand. That meant feeling not-alone even when she was by herself. And not for any simplistic reason like the sweater that didn’t belong to her folded on the back of the couch or the rogue strand of curly brown hair on the tile floor, though she appreciated the visual reminders, but the emotional echo in every room of thoughtful attention and of compatibility and of love.

At ten minutes to the hour and with only a few sips left in her cup, Helena’s phone buzzed the double heartbeat notification assigned to only one person. The message — “still on for this evening...and later, of course” — brought an immediate shift to Helena’s bearing, drawing out a wolfish grin. Reflection turned to anticipation, and Helena levered herself up to straight-backed and square-shouldered.

Teacup rinsed and set in the sink, hair absentmindedly brushed back, leather folio slid from her bag, door closed firmly behind her. She was certain that her grin terrified most of the people she passed on her way to the department meeting, and she was certain it would terrify most of the people at her destination, as well.

Helena arrived, as planned, just as the last of her colleagues had seated himself, leaving one chair open...directly next to Myka Bering, who never bothered with the inane chatter of adults who ought to be able to figure out where to plant their backsides for an hour. A few audible gasps and a nearly universal focus followed Helena’s appearance in the doorway — only nearly, however, as the aforementioned Professor Bering hadn’t looked up from her book. Helena had never seen Myka Bering at a department meeting, faculty mixer, holiday party, or academic conference without a mid-progress book.

Aware that everyone else in the room assumed their colleague retreated to books out of discomfort or anxiety or misanthropy, Helena indulged in a slight sneer; she knew the same lack of critical thinking that led the two dozen academics to misread as embarrassment a brilliant woman’s preference for intellectual engagement would also lead them to believe she herself was reacting to the seating arrangement and not their own misjudgments.

Leather folio on the table, fountain pen ready to notate the chair’s agenda, right foot gently nestled alongside Myka’s under the table. Helena wouldn’t interrupt her partner’s reading, no matter how tempting the impulse to let their legs brush and their knees touch, but she would never pass up any opportunity to be in some contact with the woman she loved.

With an officious clearing of his throat, their department chair called the meeting to order. Myka closed her book and offered a small nod to Helena as if she’d just noticed her — both of them registered the man who taught 20th century American poetry scribbling out a note to his friend in Romantics as if the two of them were in the back of an algebra classroom. 

Helena paid enough attention to the proceedings to keep up with the discussion, but she was also getting a sense of whether any allegiances had shifted. She and Myka had done a fairly thorough assessment of who was going to vote which way on the last, most important item on the agenda. The undecideds were down to a very small number.

“All right, we heard very good points from various perspectives last month, so let’s not get into another debate. All those in favor of keeping the graduate student representation on the faculty search committee at one?”

Around the room, a good number of hands rose. 

Romantics and 20th Century Poetry both rolled their eyes as if surprised the tally wasn’t unanimous, and Romantics scoffed audibly in a display of petulance that didn’t really surprise Helena. Such a lack of subtlety.

Advanced Creative Writing took Romantics’ vocalized scorn as a cue to launch, again, into an offer to mediate a negotiation that would suit everyone. Helena let others deal with that nonsense, and she ignored the clique of the newest faculty in the far corner as they began letting their snide asides to each other rise to a volume that drowned out several earnest attempts made to add substance to the process. The department chair looked around the room helplessly.

She waited. She tuned out the chatter of the colleagues who were already firmly on one side or the other and were gleefully watching the disruption as entertainment. She gauged the currents of the revived debate, noting who was being dragged from circumspection into the riptide of ridiculous posturing.

And from outside the frothing deliberation, the previously silent Gothic Lit — one of the undecideds whose vote Helena and Myka had hoped to get — sailed in: “I can’t imagine you don’t have an opinion, Helena.”

With the merest of nods acknowledging Gothic Lit’s favor, Helena began her multi-layered argument, presenting logic and detachment without abandoning her underlying disdain of the fragile academic ego. She kept a steady pace throughout, ramping up only at the end as she targeted crafted overtures at each of the last of the holdouts, who seemed to Helena to be receptive despite some verbalized pushback from among the wider audience.

Mutterings were just turning to full-fledged commotion as Helena wrapped up, and then... 

“I agree with Helena.” 

Romantics stopped mid-bloviate, Advanced Creative Writing looked shocked, and Gothic arched one well-sculpted eyebrow at Helena from across the room. 

Everyone else stared. At Myka.

Perhaps because the last time Myka had spoken directly to or about Helena in a faculty meeting had been the first week they’d been colleagues and before they’d been been introduced. Earlier, the adjunct walking with Myka had been distracted far past the point of Myka’s amusement and well into the realm of her irritation by the very good looking new arrival from the U.K. striding into the dean’s office; but at the meeting that followed, Myka couldn’t help but steal a few glances across the three people seated between them. When Helena had responded to the the last in a string of juvenile jokes calling out British academe’s desire to retain its stuffy old boys’ club exclusivity with a barbed, “don’t you all?”, well, Myka had surprised everyone at the table with her not-soft “Neanderthals” before returning her undivided attention to her notebook. And no one, Helena included, could have said for certain whether that remark had been aimed at the people in the room. Two years later, and Myka and Helena had long ago reached détente while their colleagues assumed the chilly state of affairs from that first meeting remained.

In this moment, the shock at Myka agreeing with Helena had effectively quietened all of the arguments around them, and their department chair seized the opportunity to call for a final vote, having good enough sense to realize that four words had just demanded consensus.

Once the vote was taken and the conference room cleared out of all the English faculty, who were likely heading off to spend their evenings gossiping over beers and fries at various off-campus establishments, Helena let out a long sigh and spun her chair slightly toward Myka.

“I know that decision was very important to you. I’m pleased I could help.”

Myka leaned into Helena, resting her head against Helena’s shoulder. “You know, at some point the jig is gonna be up and people are going to figure out we don’t hate each other.” Myka laid her hand on Helena’s thigh, dragging one fingernail slowly along the fabric just to feel the sensation. “But even if we won’t have our secret anymore, I bet we get what we want anyway.”

“We do make a good team.” Helena punctuated her declaration by taking Myka’s hand.

“I’m so glad we realized it as soon as we did.”


End file.
